Jury Member Juhani Pallasmaa On Finding Less "Obvious" Pritzker Laureates

Jury Member Juhani Pallasmaa On Finding Less "Obvious" Pritzker Laureates

Last week, while the ArchDaily team was in Mexico City for the Mextrópoli Conference, we caught up with Pritzker Jury member Juhani Pallasmaa and asked him to shed some light onto the recent winners of one of architecture's highest honors. Watch Pallasmaa, a renowned Finnish architect and professor, explain what motivates his approach for recognizing architects in a world with "so much publicity."

"The Pritzker jury has now, for at least 5 years, tried to select architects who are not the most obvious names because there is so much publicity in the architectural world and we'd rather try to find architects who have not been published everywhere else..."

"Conversations in the jury are confidential. I cannot refer to collective thinking. I can only refer to my own thoughts. Now, the Pritzker jury has now, for at least 5 years, tried to select architects who are not the most obvious names because there is so much publicity in the architectural world and we'd rather try to find architects who have not been published everywhere else. Like Wang Shu -- we went to China to see mainly other works. Of course we knew Wang Shu's name and went to see his work, but his work was so powerful and so convincing that it was clear to us that he was a Pritzker Prize winner. And Shigeru Ban I think is an exemplary architect in many ways, particularly, of course, his humanitarian work, but also in his design work. He's an inventor who uses materials that other architects have not ever thought to use as construction materials."